Visual Storytelling

As a non-profit fundraising professional, you know that visual storytelling is becoming one of the most important tools of the trade. As an exercise for the Social Media Marketing MOOC, I will present two articles focused on their importance and add the 3 essential elements that should be present in your first storytelling appeals.

Relying on these articles and the profound study I have done in my master thesis about Effective Storytelling in Charitable organizations, I have summarized the 3 most relevant elements that your storytelling appeal must have:

Make it short – Your audience doesn’t have a long attention span: 15 to 30-second videos work best, especially in the first few times.

Three–stage act – it now only allows you to present your issue fast, but also integrates the audience as the hero of your story (through their donation, the conflict – issue you are trying to improve- is resolved )

Use 1 protagonist – research into the “identifiable victim effect” shows that even having 2 protagonists lowers the emotional impact of the appeal.Storytelling is a great way to create an emotional connection and, as you can see, not a big monster that is hard to tackle: just ensure you use honest stories of your impact.

About the Author:I am a recent Marketing graduate enthusiastic about non-profits. I worked two years in a volunteer setting and produced an extensive research in storytelling in non-profits for my Master Thesis. This article was done in the scope of the Social Media Marketing Specialization in Coursera.
Connect with me through twitter:@ARuivoFelix